"In whatever he wants I shall obey him,—if I only knew how."
"It's what you is bound to do, Miss Mary. Think of what he has done for you."
"I require no one to tell me that."
"What did Mr Gordon come here for, disturbing everybody? Nobody asked him;—at least, I suppose nobody asked him." There was an insinuation in this which Mary found it hard to bear. But it was better to bear it than to argue on such a point with the servant. "And he said things which put the master about terribly."
"It was not my doing."
"But he's a man as needn't have his own way. Why should Mr Gordon have everything just as he likes it? I never heard tell of Mr Gordon till he came here the other day. I don't think so much of Mr Gordon myself." To this Mary, of course, made no answer. "He's no business disturbing people when he's not sent for. I can't abide to see Mr Whittlestaff put about in this way. I have known him longer than you have."
"No doubt."
"He's a man that'll be driven pretty nigh out of his mind if he's disappointed." Then there was silence, as Mary was determined not to discuss the matter any further. "If you come to that, you needn't marry no one unless you pleases." Mary was still silent. "They shouldn't make me marry them unless I was that way minded. I can't abide such doings," the old woman again went on after a pause. "I knows what I knows, and I sees what I sees."
"What do you know?" said Mary, driven beyond her powers of silence.
"The meaning is, that Mr Whittlestaff is to be disappointed after he have received a promise. Didn't he have a promise?" To this Mrs Baggett got no reply, though she waited for one before she went on with her argument. "You knows he had; and a promise between a lady and gentleman ought to be as good as the law of the land. You stand there as dumb as grim death, and won't say a word, and yet it all depends upon you. Why is it to go about among everybody, that he's not to get a wife just because a man's come home with his pockets full of diamonds? It's that that people'll say; and they'll say that you went back from your word just because of a few precious stones. I wouldn't like to have it said of me anyhow."